1. Field of the Invention
The present embodiment of invention relates to generating a printed certificate of a log. In particular the present invention relates to generating a printed certificate of an entangled log that is used to verify the device that made changes to the document.
2. Description of the Background Art
The use of portable computing devices has become commonplace for many users. In addition to having a conventional desktop computer, many users also have some type of portable computing device. Examples of present-day portable computing devices include electronic devices for reading such as the Reader from Sony Corp., the Kindle from Amazon, and the Nook from Barnes & Noble. Smaller portable computing devices include a plethora of smart phones including the iPhone from Apple Computer Inc., the Blackberry from Research In Motion and the Pre from Palm just to name a few. There have also been increased sales of notebook laptops and tablet computers offering different levels of processing capability and size.
The portable computing devices are used to complete electronic form processing. One type of form processing uses e-mail based workflows. The distribution of electronic forms via e-mail has the advantage of being fast, easily replicable and deliverable in parallel. E-mail based workflows often require that the documents be e-mailed, printed, signed, scanned and e-mailed back. However, existing e-mail based workflows make it difficult if not impossible to add ink like signatures, notes and other sketches to electronic forms. Furthermore, e-mail based workflows fail to provide a system for tracking changes to the electronic forms by different computing devices.
Yet another attempt by the prior art to overcome the shortcomings of form processing has been to provide centralized workflow systems. However, such centralized workflow systems often require that each user log in and require a significant amount of customized programming. Thus, even the smallest change to a workflow cannot be performed immediately. Instead a small change requires a custom modification by a skilled programmer, and typically introduces significant delay before the centralized system matches the desired workflow. Furthermore, such centralized system workflows do not accommodate arbitrary comments or modification of electronic documents. Typically such systems only provide access when a user is fully connected to the system, and users often take documents out of the central system, use a word processor to edit them and then return them to the system. Such centralized workflow systems make it difficult to track users and verify the authenticity of the documents.